Slave House - Slave House - 100%

Slavehouse came into my knowledge in 2014 when a friend sent me a mediafire link with just that word as the name. The friend told me in short, “Thank me later”. I listened and was instantly hooked, because this, this is everything I love about raw black metal packaged in a meaty 8 minute slab of sheer and unadulterated stupidity.

My beef with a lot of raw black metal and black metal in general is the weakness of the riffs. There’s a lot of bands where everything is aligned just right, but there’s no punch to the riffs or music. That is where Slavehouse cuts themselves above, the riffs on this demo have only have a violent punch but this gnarly “meaty” tone to them. They’re midpaced, knuckle-dragging riffs you would expect in a punk band like Hoax, but put to use in a much superior fashion. Even the song “Sacred Flesh” with it’s 1-2 beat intro calls out to the band’s punk background, but it works much better in my opinion.

Now, this demo in terms of the style is a lot cleaner than most of the bands in this niche, while usually I’d register that as a complaint but it really works in Slavehouse’s favor. There’s plenty of sludge and grime dripping off everything but not enough to muck up everything. You can hear all the instruments well enough with the vocals shrieking over the mix.

If there is any complaint at all I could have with this demo is how short it is. It ends and leaves you yearning for more, only for there not to be more (yet). I know the LP has been in the works for a few years now and it’s at the top of my most anticipated for 2018. Either way until then, I’ll keep beating ass to this.